Northern Territory general election, 1990

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27 October 1990 (1990-10-27)

1994 →

All 25 seats of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly

	First party	Second party

Leader	Marshall Perron	Terry Smith
Party	Country Liberal	Labor
Leader since	14 July 1988	19 August 1986
Leader's seat	Fannie Bay	Millner
Last election	16 seats	6 seats
Seats won	14 seats	9 seats
Seat change	2	3
Percentage	48.8%	36.6%
Swing	9.4	0.6

Chief Minister before election

Marshall Perron
Country Liberal

Elected Chief Minister

Marshall Perron
Country Liberal

A general election was held in the Northern Territory on Saturday 27 October 1990, and was won by the incumbent Country Liberal Party (CLP) under Chief Minister Marshall Perron.

The CLP's political strategy for the campaign, devised by the Chief Minister's media secretary, Tony-Barker May, involved attacking the opposition ALP's policy platform, and using the costings as the basis of a 'where's the money coming from?' media assault. Although the Chief Minister was ill for much of the campaign, government ministers made challenging statements every day.

The CLP also used the services of conservative social researcher Mark Textor, subsequently co-head of Crosby Textor Group, who made accurate polling predictions during this election, outperforming internal ALP polling and independent public polling. The result came as a surprise to most except for CLP insiders.

Six months prior to the election, polling showed the CLP was headed for a big loss. However, the CLP government remained in power with an increase of over 9% to its primary vote, holding 14 of the 25 seats, with the ALP opposition gaining 3 seats for a total of 9 seats in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. Meanwhile, the Northern Territory Nationals contested the election again, but lost both of their seats. The 1990 election also saw the Australian Greens emerge in territory politics, with 3.05% of the vote—fourth behind the CLP, Labor and the Nationals.

Independents Noel Padgham-Purich and Denis Collins were both re-elected.

The NT Nationals lost both seats of Barkly and Flynn.

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